Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘I’m not very good with dentists, especially when they’re brandishing needles.’ Again he flashed that sheepish grin. ‘That’s why I changed dentists, from Mr Stewart to Mrs Stephenson.’

‘You changed dentists?’

‘Yes. It’s silly, really. Me being a policeman and yet having a phobia of going to the dentist. I was talking to the pharmacist about it and she suggested that maybe I’d be better with a woman dentist, and she told me about Mrs Stephenson, who she goes to. So I thought I might as well try her out. And to be honest, Mrs Stephenson was very nice and reassuring, but I still faint

ed, and then she insisted that I sit down and rest up with a cup of tea, but I realize I should have rung in and, well, I’m sorry, Guv.’

As Fox’s little speech petered out, Holden allowed herself to sink back down into her chair. She was conscious of tension across her shoulders and the nape of her neck, and a throbbing at the back of her head. It ought to feel better than this, when you suddenly realize you’ve been an inch away from making a terrible mistake, but it didn’t. Perhaps that was because suspicion still lurked, not yet fully under control, at the back of her brain.

‘Fox,’ she said, ‘tell me about Sarah Johnson’s diary.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not with you Guv. What about it?’

‘It wasn’t with the file. It was in your desk drawer, locked away,’ she said, and then played her final card. ‘Someone had ripped out a page. Can you explain that?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, Guv,’ he said cautiously. Suspicion was roused and active at the back of his head too. ‘That I should leave my desk drawer unlocked? That I should have noticed a page was missing from the diary? Or what? Because to be honest, I never got round to reading it properly. I mean I flicked through it at the beginning, but after that I put it in my drawer because it seemed safer, and besides my desk diary is very like it. And then I forgot all about it.’

‘Your forgot all about it?’ Accusation, doubt and suspicion accompanied these words, but they were more to do with Fox’s lack of professionalism than anything else. The idea of Fox as killer had almost completely receded, and she felt deflated and irritated as a consequence.

At which point in their conversation, the door burst open and in walked a figure known to both of them.

‘Don!’ Holden said brightly, ‘Is it good to see you!’

‘The pleasure is all mine,’ he flashed back, all charm and smarm. He placed a thin bundle of papers on the desk.

‘Is that all there is?’ Holden said, disappointment apparent in her voice.

‘There’s this too,’ Alexander replied, pulling a CD out of his pocket as a conjuror might pull the missing card. ‘We’re in the twenty-first century Inspector, where we come from, and photos are mostly digital.’ Holden snatched it irritably from his hand and moved round the desk to sit back down at her PC. Fox, a man happier with old fashioned photos and grubby newspaper cuttings, began to leaf deliberately through those on the desk.

‘So what is it exactly we are looking for?’ he asked eagerly.

‘There’s no need for you to hang around, Don,’ Holden said dismissively. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

‘I can’t let these out of my sight, Inspector,’ he said pompously. ‘I’m doing you a big favour as it is.’

‘Well, sit down over there,’ she said indicating a red chair in the corner of the room. ‘We can’t work with you peering over our shoulders. ’

‘As you wish,’ he said, and moved away. He was not unhappy. He was in the room and on the spot. Whatever kicked off, he would know. The story was safe.

Barely a minute had passed before Holden broke the silence. ‘Look!’ she said.

Fox, who was in the middle of reading a newspaper report, moved round the desk. ‘Well, damn me!’ He found himself staring at a pair of sombre-looking men standing in front of a large rectangular hole in the ground. One he didn’t recognize, but the other, the one of the right-hand side, was all too familiar.

‘Can I help?’ Alexander asked, standing up as he did so.

‘No!’ Holden snapped, as she clicked again with the mouse. Another picture came up. There were five people in this one. Holden and Fox stared for three or four seconds before the sergeant spoke:

‘Isn’t that what’s her name?’

‘Rachel Laing, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think so. And the guy next to her, in the anorak, I’ve met him in church.’

‘Church?’

‘He came up and spoke to me. He knew Jake and Sarah, from the day centre.’